AUTUMN IN MADRID

I haven’t posted here in a while, and that is because I have had some resent changes in my life and I’ve been trying to adapt to all of them. I quitted my job (will love to tell that story soon) and then went back to Mexico for a few weeks. Then we came back to London and I had a trip planned to Sweden, which I will post soon! So after a few hectic weeks we went to Spain for the weekend. We were meeting my in laws in Zaragoza for a day and then headed to Madrid.

Zaragoza is such a lovely town. It is small but quite cosmopolitan and has great restaurants and shops. We had dinner at the “Mercado Gastronomico“, a really cool concept with a main bar and lots of small restaurants around. It felt like a very posh food court. We had amazing red wine, tapas, jamon iberico, cheese and paella.

That next day we headed to Madrid and I was really excited about this. Ten years ago I visited a good friend of mine in Madrid. It was one of the first flights I did all by myself and I remember a feeling of being nervous but also excited. I was living in Paris and hadn’t done much travel arounf Europe, but I really wanted to visit Madrid. In a smartphoneless era I somehow managed to find my way through the city and really enjoyed myself. Now ten years later I saw this city with different eyes, I remember some bits, but other where not as I remembered. I love going back to places after a few years and realize how not just the city has changed and evolved, but so do I.

This day we tried to visit as much as we could, we went to the Palacio Real, Plaza Mayor, Museo Reina Sofia and to eat at Mercado San Miguel. This food market is located in a historical building near Madrid centre. You’ll can find some of Spain’s finest Iberian ham and fresh fish as well as delicious paellas and wine spread out over more that 20 stands.

The next day the weather was lovely so we decided to walk around Parque del Retiro and we visited the Crystal Palace, one of my favourite places in Madrid. It was inspired by Paxton’s Crystal Palace in the UK. After our lovely autumn stroll we headed to Museo del Prado. I was dying to see Velazquez’s Meninas, but unfortunately there was a huge queue to buy tickets for the museum. So if you are visiting Madrid and will like to go to Prado’s Museum you should purchase your tickets online here. We decided to visit CaixaForum instead because they had a lovely Disney exhibition about the art direction and creative process behind their movies. It was a very fun and nostalgic experience to see the sketches of Snow White, Little Mermaid and Frozen. I totally recommend it.

I hope I can get to visit Madrid again for a longer time and really explore all its restaurants and night life! I guess if I return after 10 years so much will be changed and I know I will be in such a different stage in life.